"In a court filing on Monday, an attorney representing the plaintiffs in a class action suit seeking damages from Apple's e-book price fixing scheme informed federal Judge Denise Cote that the company has agreed to settle."

This was going to be a separate proceeding from the ongoing anti-trust trial — with Judge Cote having declared Apple guilty of anti-trust violations, she was going to determine whether Apple should pay almost $1 billion in punitive damages. Having settled, Apple will avoid the maximum penalty in the event that its appeal of the original verdict fails. We don't know yet how much the company would pay out in that event, but you can bet it will be a lot less than $840 million.